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An Indian company is today the largest solar company in the world.
A world ranking last month revealed that Adani Green Energy (Agel), part of the conglomerate Adani Group, had surpassed Hong Kong’s GCL New Energy to become the world’s leading solar developer.
Adani’s five-year run to the top was made possible by an Indian government contract in January to build 8 gigawatts (GW) of large-scale solar capacity.
The world’s largest solar collection award brought Adani’s total solar portfolio to 12.3 GW, roughly 70% larger than GCL.
One gigawatt can power more than a million Indian households.
Based in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Adani has reflected India’s interest and commitment to solar energy in many ways.
In 2015, he declared India’s solar goal: 100 GW by 2022. That year, Adani launched his first solar project.
At a United Nations conference last year, Modi announced that India would increase its renewable energy capacity to 450 GW by 2030 and double the share from non-fossil sources from 21% to 40% by 2030.
Adani Chairman Gautam Adani, known to be close to the Prime Minister, wrote on LinkedIn shortly after: “The Adani Group has quickly moved into a position to lead this clean energy transformation.”
At the end of August, the production capacity of solar power plants in India was just 37 GW per day.
The country’s ambitious solar leap towards its goal will now be led by a conglomerate that is also India’s largest private producer of thermal energy.
The Adani Group has a controversial history of environmental damage through its coal port on the west coast of India.
Its massive Carmichael coal mine in Australia and coal exports via rail lines and a maritime terminal will stimulate carbon pollution and could seriously damage the environmentally sensitive Great Barrier Reef, climate scientists say.
The company is expanding its clean energy portfolio, including excluding India’s first coal deposit auction for commercial mining which is now underway.
“Globally, large consumers, power distribution companies and governments are pushing for renewables due to the higher price of coal and environmental costs. As a large conglomerate, Adani continues to invest in coal, but seeing the trend globally, its share of renewable and thermal energy is changing, “said Mr. Vinay Rastogi, founder of Delhi-based energy analysis firm Bridge To India.
Reflecting the new emphasis from India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Adani announced in January that it wanted to indigenize the entire solar value chain of the country by manufacturing components.
Agel’s new contract includes a commitment to establish manufacturing capacity to make 2 GW solar panels and photovoltaic cells by 2022, in addition to the group’s 1.3 GW cell manufacturing plant in Mundra, Gujarat.
At the moment, India imports 85 percent of its cell and module needs mainly from China, but also from Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan. About 94 percent of the world’s solar components are made in China.
An analysis by Bridge To India said that Chinese solar manufacturers have a global competitive advantage, thanks to factors such as strong government support, a larger scale of production and access to in-house technology.
To lift India out of a crippling reliance on Chinese components, the government had imposed a 25 percent safeguard duty on imported solar cells and panels for two years starting in July 2018, and this year extended the duty by around 15 percent.
The tariffs helped some local companies like Agel to increase their market share, but overall, they were counterproductive, making solar projects more expensive, experts say.
In addition, the tariffs ended up slowing down new solar installations. India’s solar power addition fell to 7.3GW last year from 8.3GW in 2018, according to a report by energy analytics firm Mercom India Research.
“If India wants a massive addition of solar capacity, the logical direction now is towards mass manufacturing of components. Now there is a push in integrated manufacturing that covers all four steps: silicon ingots, wafers, photovoltaic cells and modules,” he said. Praveer Sinha, Managing Director of Tata Power, which has been updating its solar module technology.
Currently, the country manufactures enough solar panels to produce 16 GW of energy and enough cells to generate 2.5 GW. There are almost 100 module manufacturers and 15 cell producers, mainly for the domestic market, but there are no wafer manufacturers.
Rastogi said that “the capital intensive sector will need large companies with a lot of money” to invest in solar parts.
At a symposium on solar manufacturing earlier this month, Amitesh Kumar Sinha, deputy secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said that India will need to add at least 30 GW of modules, cells, wafers and silicon to reach its solar goal.
The ministry has proposed financial incentives such as a performance-linked export program and interest aid. Following the border hostilities, it will continue to impose safeguard duties on Chinese imports.
Sumant Sinha, President of ReNew Power, which is installing a 2 GW cell and module production plant, said: “To realistically add 30 GW, we will need between US $ 10 billion (S $ 13.6 billion) and $ 15 billion in solar modules each year.
“Wind energy is totally indigenous because the Indian government supported the sector from the beginning. For solar to be the champion sector in India, domestic manufacturing is the only way for the sector to be viable.”
The Adani Group has a controversial history of environmental damage through its coal port on the west coast of India.
Its massive Carmichael coal mine in Australia and coal exports via rail lines and a maritime terminal will stimulate carbon pollution and could seriously damage the environmentally sensitive Great Barrier Reef, climate scientists say.
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